Three Champions Crowned At WISSOTA 100

HURON, SD (September 14) – Rain cut short the final night of the 2013 Speedway Motors WISSOTA 100 Saturday at Dakota State Fair Speedway. Prior to the precipitation that ended the night's action, three WISSOTA 100 champions were crowned, including Josh Abrahamson in the Mod Four division, Casey Arneson in the Midwest Modified division and Cody Skytland in the Modified division.

Abrahamson was also the winner of the Mod Four division's AMSOIL Race Of Champions on Friday night during the WISSOTA 100. Jim Erdmann, another racer in the Mod Four division, took home the most money of any racer during the weekend when he was drawn as the winner of Orv's $10,000 Pot Of Gold during the program on Saturday night.

Arneson earned his first WISSOTA 100 title in masterful fashion. He took his machine near the front of the field and, just after Shane Halopka stole the lead from Jason Vejtruba, Arneson turned the tables on Halopka and took the point for himself. Once out front he controlled the pace to the finish and kept his car comfortably ahead of Travis Saurer, who charged through the field to finish second, and Halopka, who settled for third.

Skytland, who was the event's defending Late Model champion from 2012, was the Modified winner this year after a dramatic finish in that division's main event. Skytland drove through the field after starting in the third row of the three-wide lineup and passed Austin Arneson, the brother of the newly crowned Midwest Mod event champion, around the halfway point.

Once out front, Skytland built a solid lead and he was within sight of the checkered flag when disaster struck; two cars he was about to lap collided and spun in front of him. With nowhere to go, he clipped one of them then bounced off and struck the outside retaining wall; his car was damaged and unable to continue.

The field was realigned to go green-white-checkered and the pack raced past the flagstand to settle things; however, just as the green appeared, it suddenly began to rain heavily; all of the cars made it through turns one and two at speed, but when the field made it to turn three, the track was too slick from the rain and approximately half of the cars crashed into the turn three wall or another car; two cars, those of Travis Saurer and Matt Gilbertson, ended up flipped over. There were no injuries in the multi-car melee but it was clear the race had to be stopped at that point.

Officials then conferred and reverted scoring back to the last completed lap, which was the white flag lap, and Skytland was declared the winner.

It continued raining hard for a long period and the track was deemed unrecoverable for the night. After considering the forecast for Sunday and discussing the track conditions with DSFS promoter Orville Chenoweth, WISSOTA officials made the very difficult decision to cancel the remaining three feature events – Super Stocks, Street Stocks and Late Models – and not run them the following day.

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